With the development and spread of communication networks and the rapid increase in the Internet population, a variety of web contents, including electronic commerce, portals, games, and the like, have been provided to go with the growth of the Internet.
On-line games through the Internet, which are daily populated by young boys and girls, include arcade games, role-playing games, strategic simulation games, shooting games, sports games such as car racing and golf, adventure games, and the like.
Among these games, particularly in games using balls, such as a golf game, a baseball game, a volleyball game, a billiard game, and the like, a swing control means for moving a ball to a direction and position desired by a user has been used. Hereinafter, the swing control means is called a swing gage for the sake of convenience of explanation. Here, “swing” refers to an act for moving balls in games using balls, such as a shot in a golf game.
The swing gage may be configured in various forms. For example, the swing gage generally includes a zone for determining a direction of movement or an amount of rotation of a ball and a scroll bar for moving or stopping a movement guide for guiding movement of the ball to the zone according to manipulation by a user.
When a user swings the ball using the swing gage having the above structure in the ball game, the scroll bar begins to move along the movement guide according to a first manipulation by the user, and then, the moving scroll bar stops according to a second manipulation by the user. A movement direction (and/or an amount of rotation) of the ball is determined according to a positional relationship between a stop position of the scroll bar and the zone and a swing by which the ball is moved in the determined movement direction. In this case, a movement distance of the ball is determined according to a condition of movement of the scroll bar and the ball is moved by the determined movement distance in the determined movement direction in the swing.
However, when a ball game, such as golf, baseball, or the like, is played using the swing gage operating as described above, since there is no difference in manipulation of the swing gage between a swing having a high degree of difficulty and a swing having a low degree of difficulty, there is a disadvantage in that the ball game is less interesting.
For example, in an actual off-line golf game, to spin the ball is even more difficult than not to spin the ball. However, conventionally, under a condition where a position of the zone of the swing gage is always fixed, the ball is selectively spun only by requiring the user to place the scroll bar on the zone.
In this manner, conventionally, since manipulation of the swing gage is conducted under the same conditions in both a case that the ball is spun and a case that the ball is not spun, there is a disadvantage in that operation of the ball game is too easy, and accordingly, the ball game is less interesting.